Saturday 28 October 2023, 7.30pm
Cafe OTO is proud to announce a new artist residency, featuring multimedia artist Vicki Bennett aka People Like Us. Vicki has collaborated with a wide range of artists and musicians; some are joining us for this 3-Day residency, both solo and in collaboration.
The residency includes brand new performances by all artists, a preview of the new People Like Us AV performance "The Library of Babel", and new collaborations between People Like Us, Ergo Phizmiz, Gwilly Edmondez and Wobbly.
Under the name “People Like Us,” artist Vicki Bennett has been making work available via CD, video and vinyl, radio broadcasts, concert appearances, gallery exhibits and online streaming and distribution since 1992. She sees collage as folk art sourced from the palette of contemporary media and technology, with all of the sharing and cross-referencing incumbent to a populist form. Using collage as a compositional tool, Vicki Bennett opens up endless opportunities to experience results that are more than the sum of the parts. Most of the People Like Us back catalogue has been available for free on UbuWeb since 2002 and Vicki has a weekly radio show "DO or DIY with People Like Us" on WFMU.
https://peoplelikeus.org
https://wfmu.org/playlists/pl
https://ubu.com/sound/plu.html
Our residency compère is Hearty White, a performer based in Lexington, KY. His one-hour weekly radio show "Miracle Nutrition with Hearty White" has aired on WFMU from 2012 until the present.
Ergo Phizmiz is a composer, writer, collagist, stage director and radio playwright. Recent projects have included animated stage designs for "The Rake's Progress" at the Royal Academy of Music and Maggio Musicale Firenze, and the gargantuan, smash hit community pantomime "The Quantum Horse" in collaboration with Cube Microplex, Bristol. Their multiple award winning work for radio includes programmes for Bayerischer Rundfunk, Deutschlandradiokultur, BBC Radio 3, BBC 6Music, WFMU, West Deutscher Rundfunk, VPRO and Resonance FM. Recent music releases have mainly comprised the deluxe holiday leisure trilogy on Strategic Tape Reserve "Elmyr", "Plaza Centraal" and "Owl and Monkey Haven". Ergo is currently developing a new operatic work "Adapting Don Quixote" as a PhD at the University of Bristol.
Ergo will perform a rare solo set for this residency.
http://ergophizmizmusic.bandcamp.com
People Like Us will preview this new a/v performance at their residency.
First there is experience.
Then we attach a story to it.
The Library of Babel is a vast library of words. Some combine to make stories of consequence, others are nonsensical.
The library is complete.
Yet searching it is futile.
Using dense collage and splintered narrative, “The Library of Babel” by People Like Us is a journey through cinema and sound where the actors are set adrift from their story, left with pure experience.
Gwilly Edmondez emerged in the 1980s from Bridgend, South Wales, where he was a founder member of Radioactive Sparrow, once dubbed ‘the most legendary band you’ve probably never heard of.’ Gwilly practices a form of composition that disavows fixity and rehearsal, preferring an approach that dissolves the line between ‘life’ and ‘performance’ in ways that compromise neither. Having coined the term Wild Pop to describe his aesthetic as both a solo artist and as Gustav Thomas in YEAH YOU (est. 2013), his embracing the age of evaporation is manifest in a relentless autopathology oriented towards devotional sublimation.
Gwilly closes Day 2 of the residency with a special dictaphone karaoke set, a real crowd pleaser.
Porest is the music and performance outlet of post-American artist and producer Mark Gergis. For decades, Porest has issued a trail of confounding agitprop sound art, post-globalized hate-pop, diabolical radio dramas, big songs and small songs. Porest’s blatant embezzlement of human syntax and cultural misunderstanding broadcasts vital mixed messages across all fields, forging carefully rearranged realities that both avoid and indulge the inherent trappings of radical art and politics. Live performances integrate Porest’s music, performance and sound into a grand total sum that can’t be unseen. Ongoing collaborations have included: Negativland (USA) Alan Bishop / Sun City Girls (USA), Aavikko (Finland), Vicki Bennett aka: People Like Us (UK), among others. Porest has performed and toured worldwide, with albums released on Nashazphone (Cairo), Discrepant (UK), and in the US on the Seeland, Abduction and Resipiscent labels.
In the 1990s and 2000s, Mark was co-founder of the long-running experimental California music and performance collective Mono Pause, as well as its offshoot Neung Phak. In his other life, Mark is an archivist and producer for global music releases on the Sublime Frequencies and Sham Palace labels, including compilations and documentary works such as I Remember Syria, Cambodian Cassette Archives, Saigon Rock & Soul, Choubi Choubi (Iraq), Dabke: Sounds from the Syrian Houran and his extensive work with artists Omar Souleyman (Syria) and Erikin Koray (Turkey).
